I recall laughing on first hearing that Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams was approaching the Trump camp about possible pardons, thinking, “Well, it’s not like you have anything to lose… ” And not thinking even slightly creatively, or objectively, in realizing that every supposition that I have, every presumption as to how things work, all were initially formed within the old model, the one where the “right thing” was going to happen most of the time. But we’re not in that period anymore, and Adams’s camp was working on the new model, one in which all they need say is that they’re in Trump’s camp, and Trump owns the NYC Mayor’s Office, and that’s it – the New York City Mayor, once indicted and looking to be on the way out, now has charges against him dropped, and moving on as mayor of the greatest city on the planet, directly beholden to a president who could reignite prosecutions at any hour…
Adams is not pardoned, though. No. The Trump administration just managed to have the DOJ, through the already questionable Attorney General Pamela Bondi, drop the charges against Adams without prejudice… Meaning they can file those charges again at any point, should they need to, but for now, Adams is a new man, loyal to Trump, and thus facing no issues whatsoever.
It has the regulars at DOJ walking around like they were just hit over the head. The “regulars” include powerful prosecutor Danielle Sassoon, a major Trump supporter but also a major prosecutor (Real deal attorney), who did not sign up for this, and when she was told to drop the charges against Adams, she instead resigned. As noted this morning by Mediaite:
“I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” wrote one prosecutor, Republican-appointed Danielle Sassoon, in her resignation letter. “But it was never going to be me.”
Karl, in his monologue Sunday, noted the right-wing bona fides of Sassoon — who clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia — as he warned about the implications of the exodus of DOJ prosecutors by invoking a dark chapter in American history.
“The top prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, a highly-respected conservative who was appointed by Donald Trump, blasted the move [to drop charges against Adams] and she resigned in protest,” Karl said. “Six other career prosecutors followed her lead and resigned — an exodus that has drawn comparisons to the darkest days of Watergate.”
In case we weren’t furious, now would be a great f’ing time to become so. Because we need a functioning government, a real American government, not Saddam Hussein’s America 2.0 – we need real attorneys in at SDNY. What happens if the FBI finds a terrorist cell tomorrow, but cannot get a warrant for a wiretap because there is too little experience left in how to go about doing it correctly and the judge stamps it down, even though a capable prosecutor could’ve had it in two hours? I just throw it out there to shake everyone out of their slumber, this is bad. When you cannot govern yourself, it is bad because no one else is going to do it for you.
I wonder if we liberal Democrats believed it would be this bad, where all someone like Adams has to do is pledge loyalty while still retaining something of value (He is still mayor), and be willing to trade on it. This is the new era, we’re not even concerned that it looks bad – no need to make it look anything except what it is, which is 100% corrupt and sufficient such that Danielle Sassoon would rather walk out the door in a haste than work in this administration doing its terrible deeds.
Meanwhile, on Fox News, Andy McCarthy had a “get religion” discussion this morning with the MAGA audience, essentially accusing the administration of already abusing the office far more than Biden ever dreamed of and to stop. Again, from Mediaite:
“It does not follow that, because the previous Justice Department was politicized, all of the people it targeted were pure as the driven snow,” McCarthy wrote. “Trump engaged in serious misconduct, regardless of whether it was actionable misconduct.”
Of Bondi, McCarthy wrote, “If she is just going to spout Trump’s grievances without putting the Justice Department’s response to egregious behavior in context, then she’s engaging in partisan law enforcement, exactly the noxious practice she claims to be rooting out.”
And here is where he really turns the corner on the “weaponization” of government thing. McCarthy notes that the Weaponization Working Group:
“Exists to settle the president’s scores and rewrite dark chapters of his history — while providing him with quarterly assurances of Attorney General Bondi’s progress on what is now the Justice Department’s core mission.”
And that is how one knows that Bondi has been thoroughly corrupted already because she hasn’t been in office long enough to have made considered independent decisions on these matters and is thus leaning in on some decisions already made for her regarding the direction and she’s accepted it 100% – someone else’s judgment. Highly dubious.
“Mayor Adams has a responsibility to convince the people of New York City … that he’s not simply taking orders from a Trump administration, a Trump Department of Justice, or Trump officials," House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries tells @JonKarl. https://t.co/QNYzyfKJa8 pic.twitter.com/liCCvU1PfK
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) February 16, 2025
Good luck with that above. These are the people needed, the principled conservative prosecutors:
NEWS: Hagan Scotten, one of the SDNY attorneys prosecuting Eric Adams' case, has resigned … and is blasting the Trump Justice Department on the way out.
— Noah Shachtman (@noahshachtman.bsky.social) 2025-02-14T15:41:18.104Z
This is all just so awful. All it takes to fully appreciate it is to realize how you felt when you heard that the FBI and DOJ had raided the NYC Mayoral Mansion and filed charges. I don’t know about you but I recall thinking, “That guy is screwed. They wouldn’t file unless they had him dead to rights on about 50 ways each… ” And they did. So now, know that Adams is just as corrupt, he will get away with what he’s done (And so will everyone else, so long as they support Donald Trump in so doing their due criminality), and the only real difference is that we lost some very high caliber people at DOJ who would have otherwise been there, filing for search warrants on the terrorists, had they not been sold out over politics.
These are darker days than Watergate because this is only the beginning. Trump hasn’t really set about monetizing the White House yet. But Adams isn’t getting through this for free, that’s for damned sure… We will likely never know the real deal. But some do, they’re the ones walking away in disgust.
God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter-X at @JasonMiciak and now follow on Bluesky
